Animals and the Language of Sustainability (ASLE 2013, May 28-June 1, Lawrence, Kansas)

full name / name of organization:

Christina M. Colvin, Emory University

contact email:

cmcolvi@emory.edu

Abstracts are invited for a pre-formed panel to be proposed to The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) Biennial Conference May 28-June 1, 2013 at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

This panel will examine the limits and potentialities of the language of "sustainability" as it concerns (or is reluctant to concern) nonhuman animals. To what extent do ideas and initiatives surrounding sustainability extend to nonhuman animals? How does sustainability apply to certain ideas of the environment at the inclusion or exclusion of animal life? Who and what gets sustained, and according to what values? What animals are understood as sustainable, unsustainable, or even unworthy of sustaining, and when and why does the language of sustainability affect animal lives and populations unequally? Proposals from all disciplines and approaches are welcome.

Topics to be explored may include, but are in no way limited to:
--difficult-to-"sustain" species, threatened and endangered species
--population control and wildlife management
--extinction: the eventness of extinction, prevention, panic, the Holocene Extinction, unsustainable animals
--intersections and divergences between the rhetoric and narratives of animal welfare, sustainability, conservationism, endangerment, and biodiversity
--factory farming, mass-produced/excessively sustained animals
--speciesism and sustainability
--animals as "natural resource"
--"flourishing" v. "invasion"
--tensions between native and invasive species, what species do and do not have a right to life
--strays and feral animals, animal shelter overpopulation
--extermination efforts for unwanted animals, such as dingo baiting and similar dingo eradication efforts in Australia
--the rhetoric of pest control, legitimizing animal destruction
--national parks and the limits of "wild" and protected spaces

Abstracts should be no more than 700 words and should be accompanied by a short vita (under 300 words). Please send to Christina Colvin at cmcolvi@emory.edu. Deadline for submission is November 1, 2012.